Central Square (WSYR-TV) - Do you know anyone who has recently retired from a job covered by the New York State retirement system? Are they getting their full benefit or a partial payment?
June Smith of Central Square brought this to the attention of the NewsChannel 9 team. Smith retired last April and has only been getting $360 per month, but she believes she should be receiving about $500.
Her check stub carries the memo that the state is still trying to calculate her precise benefit. When she called Albany for a better explanation, however, they told her it’s now taking almost twice as long to finalize benefits.
The office of the State Comptroller has typically told retirees they can expect to wait four to six months for their benefit amount to be finalized. Now, the wait is even longer: eight to 10 months.
Their office explains that a there has been a substantial increase in retirements and there is no additional staff to process them.
A spokesperson for the comptroller said that because of the retirement incentive in 2010, the Benefit Calculations Bureau processed a total of almost 31,000 applications last year. 12,000 of those applications were attributed to the incentive offered that year. All of them came during the last six months of last year.
Normally, they average between 17 and 19,000 applications in a given year. Normally, there are about 5 to 6,000 retirees waiting for a final benefit determination.
Right now, there are roughly 13,000 retirees like June Smith waiting for that final determination.
Once the final benefit is calculated, it’s paid out at once, retroactively.
June’s already behind four months on her full benefit. Unless the process accelerates in Albany, it will be another six months before the state retirement system gets caught up and pays her fully.
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